Shakespeare Folio, Frank Herbert's Dune, and Ernest Hemingway Top Freeman’s Book Auction
Freeman's
Alberto Sangorski's Le Morte d'Arthur by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The latest Freeman’s Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts auction featured selections from Richard Flaherty’s Shakespeare library, including a previously unrecorded copy of the rare Third Folio which was the hightest selling lot at $121,150, more than triple its low estimate.
Ernest Hemingway's Three Stories and Ten Poems (Paris, Contact Publishing Co., 1923) sold for $83,050. This copy was a partially unopened first edition of Hemingway’s first book and was inscribed to his cousin Ruth. Another inscribed first edition, Dune by Frank Herbert, went for $48,000 following a $8,000 – $12,000 estimate.
Other highlights included:
- a first edition of William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (New York, Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1929) from the major Faulkner collection of Thurston Roach ($15,360) plus The Marble Faun ($8,320), a rare first edition of Faulkner’s first book comprising a pastoral cycle of poems
- Part One of the W. Somerset Maugham Collection of Craig V. Showalter in which an inscribed first edition of Maugham's Of Human Bondage (London, William Heinemann, 1915) with its very rare and suppressed dust jacket - only four copies known - was sold for $38,400
- a deeply personal 1788 autograph Robert Burns letter signed "Robt. Burns" to Frances Dunlop with the complete first version of Written in Friars Carse Hermitage and 12 lines of an early version of First Epistle of Robert Graham, Esq. ($41,600)
- Alberto Sangorski's Le Morte d'Arthur (London, ca 1910) by Alfred, Lord Tennyson ($41,600)
